Tangier

Tangier frames David Henniger and Jo Henniger’s journey through Morocco as both a place to leave and a place to escape back through. On the road toward Chefchaouen, its outskirts appear as a long, battered corridor of dust, traffic, damaged trees, and unfinished urban growth. Near the end of the journey, Tangier becomes David’s intended route back to England: he rejects the suggestion that he rest there and insists on driving through the night. The city’s narrative importance lies in that contrast between the difficult passage outward and the hurried return he hopes will put distance between himself and what has happened.

The Road Out

The approach to Chefchaouen is made in an old Toyota Camry rented from Avis Tangier. Its soft brakes and torn red leather make the car an imperfect instrument for the trip, while David drives tensely in perforated gloves. On the hard shoulder, women in ribboned straw hats push mules with sticks; the road runs past stones and orange trees, with hillside slums, makeshift apartment blocks, and antennas rising above it. Rather than offering a clean boundary between city and countryside, the route seems to stretch without a visible beginning or end. Its one lingering impression is the taste of the sea.

The drive also registers through David’s fatigue and vigilance. He is determined to get out of the city quickly, but the day’s light has worn his eyes down. The road narrows in his perception to a geometric glare crowded with movements he must watch for: animals, children, trucks, and broken-down thirty-year-old Mercedes. The list gives the passage a practical danger, yet its accumulating obstacles also make departure feel less like a simple transition than a pressured effort to push through a landscape that will not clear itself for him.

The Suburban Landscape

The suburbs of Tangier are described as ruined, but not emptied of life. Gardens remain among crippled lemon trees and olives; beside them stand empty factories, while the atmosphere carries the impression of disillusion and the smell of young men. The juxtaposition prevents the outskirts from resolving into either pure desolation or picturesque rural scenery. Cultivated growth persists, though damaged, within an environment marked by industrial abandonment and social unease.

This view is shaped by the discomfort of the drive. Dust, fierce light, traffic, and the need to watch the roadside mediate David’s encounter with the place; Tangier is not presented as a composed panorama but as a succession of pressures on a driver trying to get out. The road’s mixture of animals, people, vehicles, and broken infrastructure places different forms of movement side by side, without suggesting that they share equal safety or ease. Its urban edge is at once crowded and depleted: visible signs of habitation remain, but the gardens and trees bear damage and the factories are empty.

The Intended Return

Later, after the events at Tafal’aalt, David proposes driving through the night and reaching Tangier in a single leap. He says he has slept all afternoon by the pool and feels fit to make the journey. Richard Galloway offers a different pace: a better map, an extra night, or a night or two in Tangier to recover. He notes that boutique hotels are available and that David need not stay at the Angleterre. Tangier is thus presented as a possible place to pause, not merely a road junction on the way out.

David refuses that pause. He has said nothing about Tafal’aalt, and nobody has asked him about it; now he does not intend to act as though he will follow Richard’s ordinary, reassuring plan. His stated aim is to get back to England, and he imagines relaxation only once he is on the plane at Málaga airport. When he says the whole country feels jinxed, Dally Margolis coolly rejects the idea. The exchange makes Tangier the threshold of a desired departure, while also showing that David’s urgency is bound up with his refusal to discuss what has happened. The city offers a route home and the possibility of rest, but he chooses onward motion instead.